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Student bus drivers gear up with more complaints

Posted: Tuesday, November 16, 1999

By Joan StroerStaff Writer

Disgruntled student bus drivers at the University of Georgia will present a revised list of complaints over pay and working conditions to transit managers today and reserve the option of staging a sickout if they don't get results, a student leading the salary negotiations said Monday.

Nobody wants to upset a bus system that transports 9 million passengers a year, but student drivers probably could hurt operations if they ducked work for a day or two, with the shortage of certified bus drivers, said Christopher Floyd, a 23-year-old UGA graduate student from Bonaire.

Most of the university's bus drivers are students.

''They could go out and hire every out-of-work dump truck driver,'' Floyd said. ''I don't see that happening.''

UGA has agreed to raise the pay of senior student drivers to $8.45 an hour on July 1, but the students and their transit managers were still at an impasse on some issues Monday and were expected to meet Thursday with supervisors to examine the revised list of complaints.

The students have not released details of their newly configured concerns, but Floyd said students met Sunday and came up with a ''more specific, more focused'' list of complaints.

In a September letter to Campus Transit Manager Ron Hamlin, 68 student drivers threatened ''alternatives'' of complaint if raises weren't implemented by January and students weren't given more say in meetings and management like full-timers. The young drivers also want a shot at after-hours assignments such as driving the UGA football team.

Doug Ross, head of UGA auxiliary service which oversees UGA bus operations, said there's a limit to what the university can do for the young drivers, but he's open to considering new complaints. However, he said the students have been laboring under a misconception that raises can take effect before July 1, the start of the state's fiscal year.

Ross did issue a note last week to full-time UGA drivers asking them to give the student drivers the ''respect you would expect to receive'' after student drivers complained that older, full-time drivers were bossy and rude to them over bus radios.

He said the tensions among UGA drivers might be heightened this fall by a surge in the number of cars on campus that aren't registered with UGA, a hike which he said is making driving around town more of a challenge than usual.

The increasing size of the student body doesn't make negotiating around campus any easier, either, Ross said.

''Last month, there were more unregistered vehicles getting tickets than we've ever seen before,'' he said. ''I'm simply guessing that there are more cars on campus. All this is certainly felt on the front lines, which is the student drivers.''

UGA bus drivers aren't the only ones behind the wheel in Athens with a beef. Some of the 35 drivers with Athens Transit are now complaining about their take-home pay, said Rich Matthews, head of Athens Transit.

''They are trying to negotiate some change. They raised the pay issue,'' Matthews said. ''I've asked the personnel office to look at their classification.''

Matthews said the concerns of the city bus drivers arose last month and the parties have been ''amicable'' throughout negotiations over pay, which starts at $10.22 an hour.

The city driver's complaints follow close on the heels of salary concerns raised by Clarke County school bus drivers in August. School district bus drivers have been working to strengthen union representation since they backed down on a threat to conduct a mass sickout over an alleged lack of overtime pay in September.

Matthews said Monday he's not sure why fall is shaping up as the season of discontent for Athens bus drivers.

The protests of the public employees are constrained by Georgia's right-to-work law barring strikes. A UGA official said last week the university reserves the right to fire employees if they call in sick to protest working conditions. UGA employees are encouraged by policy to take complaints up the college's chain of command.